Monday, June 8, 2015

Staunton, June 8 – Muscovites believe
that migrants are taking away jobs from local people, that they are
overburdening the health care system, and that they choose to remain
unregistered and illegal.But none of
these things are true, according to Yuliya Florinskaya, a researcher at the
Institute of Demography of the Moscow Higher School of Economics.

On the basis of a survey of 600
Muscovites and 200 immigrant workers conducted in 2013, Florinskaya concludes
that there are anecdotal problems in each of these three cases but that they
have been much exaggerated and that Muscovites are often as much to blame for
them as are the Gastarbeiters (opec.ru/1833822.html).

Forty percent of Muscovites believe
that gastarbeiters are taking away jobs from local people, but that is simply
not the case, Florinskaya says. On the one hand, unemployment is very low in
the Russian capital. And on the other, few native Muscovites are prepared to do
the kind of jobs for the kind of money that gastarbeiters are despite claims to
the contrary.

Moreover, few Muscovites are ready
to acknowledge that the lower pay the gastarbeiters receive works to the
benefit of the natives of the city.Many
of the immigrants work for individual Muscovites and at salaries that no
longtime resident of the city would agree to. Muscovites with lower incomes don’t
have this opportunity and see the migrants as a threat.

Second, many Muscovites believe that
gastarbeiters are overwhelming their city’s medical facilities, but that is not
true either, Florinskaya reports. What the city spends on their health care is
more than covered by the patents that employers have to pay. And it is also not
the case that gastarbeiters are coming to Moscow, having children and deserting
them in ever larger numbers.

There are cases of that, but they
are few in number: 95 in 2011; 85 in 2012; and 47 during the first half of
2013. Each is a tragedy, but the total phenomenon is very small compared to the
consequences of similar behaviors by Muscovites themselves, Florinskaya
suggests.

And third, while many Muscovites think gastarbeiters choose
illegal status, that does not correspond to the facts. Most migrants would like
to be legally registered and have the benefits that would give, but they often
cannot do so because in many cases, Muscovite employers refuse to give them the
paperwork that the gastarbeiters need.